[Ratboy]

I was thinking that the management of NASA must be total idiots to fake a whole space program and then do it so poorly with them being accused of a terrible safety culture and pretending to kill 7 astronauts twice due to poor decisions at the top.  And then to scatter pieces of a fake shuttle all over Texas and get a whole bunch of people to walk the bushes looking for parts and getting confused with bicycle parts in the mix and then finding 1/3 of the shuttle making them look like fools.  Why not have a fake space program that makes management look like competent workers instead, since it is all fake anyway?  If I was doing a fraud to get money, I would try to make it look well run to make it easier to get funding, not the opposite.

[supaluminus]

I was thinking that the management of NASA must be total idiots to fake a whole space program and then do it so poorly with them being accused of a terrible safety culture and pretending to kill 7 astronauts twice due to poor decisions at the top.  And then to scatter pieces of a fake shuttle all over Texas and get a whole bunch of people to walk the bushes looking for parts and getting confused with bicycle parts in the mix and then finding 1/3 of the shuttle making them look like fools.  Why not have a fake space program that makes management look like competent workers instead, since it is all fake anyway?  If I was doing a fraud to get money, I would try to make it look well run to make it easier to get funding, not the opposite.

Ah... the global conspiracy paradox.

They have the power, they pull the strings, they have their fingers in every pie...

... but for some reason, they can’t get all the bubbles out of the mock-up ISS spacewalk pool. Tis a mystery...

[OneOrion]

Here's a chance for flat earthers to inbed themselves with the Antatartic Army. They can join the special forces of the Antarctic alliance that require carpenters, fitters, electricians ect. Unfortunately you have to come from the mythical country of Australia, the land they squash on their Map....

They could go and see it for themselves and get paid! In all seriousness I was going to do this when I was younger but life and kids got in the way. I've heard it's an amazing experience...

http://jobs.antarctica.gov.au

[StinkyOne]

I was thinking that the management of NASA must be total idiots to fake a whole space program and then do it so poorly with them being accused of a terrible safety culture and pretending to kill 7 astronauts twice due to poor decisions at the top.  And then to scatter pieces of a fake shuttle all over Texas and get a whole bunch of people to walk the bushes looking for parts and getting confused with bicycle parts in the mix and then finding 1/3 of the shuttle making them look like fools.  Why not have a fake space program that makes management look like competent workers instead, since it is all fake anyway?  If I was doing a fraud to get money, I would try to make it look well run to make it easier to get funding, not the opposite.

Don't forget the human remains they found.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/834205/posts

I guess they killed some people, mangled their bodies, and scattered the remains.

[Vespa]

I've been reading around on the forum a bit, and I've noticed a common trend.

The senior Flat Earthers cherry pick what they respond to.  The creator of this topic puts in a lot of effort to thoroughly address everything Tom posts and is genuinely wanting to advance the discussion.  Yet Tom posts very short vague replies which don't address the majority of the topic creator's points, and obviously has no interest in furthering the discussion evident by the lack of replies for 8 days now.

Pete Svarrior rather than contribute to the topic, decides to focus in on the barely relevant car part of the analogy while dismissing later examples that directly show that a shape may not actually be what it appears to the eye

[AATW]

Tom basically stops replying when he's shown to be wrong. In the "clouds lit from below" thread Tom claimed that perspective causes the effect (he claimed that If I raise my hand so it looks like it is above a distant light then the shadow is cast upwards). I did an experiment to prove him wrong, posted photographic evidence. No response. I subsequently drew this diagram to say how ridiculous his claim was:



There is no way to cling to flat earth theory without invoking conspiracy. NASA, every other space agency, the airline industry, the cruise line industry, the satellite TV industry, the GPS industry.
A LOT of people would have to be "in on it". And why? Why is the "fact" that the earth is flat such a terrible truth which must be hidden from us. I know the answer to some of that are that "NASA think it's a sphere so their CGI images show it that way" but it's still a conspiracy because they are hiding the truth that they can't go into space, as are some of the other people I mentioned.

Their Occam's Razor page says:
"What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter straight up at 7 miles per second, and that NASA can do the impossible on a daily basis, explore the solar system, and constantly wow the nation by landing a man on the moon and sending robots to mars; or is the simplest explanation that they really can't do all of that stuff?"

I would counter that by saying something like:
"What's the simplest explanation; that NASA, every other space agency, the people who run GPS, satellite TV, weather and communication satellites, the airline and cruise line industry who plot their routes based on a spherical earth...is it simpler to think that they are all lying to us to us for reasons which are not well explained and that all of science is wrong; or is the simplest explanation that the earth is indeed spherical?"

[Macarios]

When you raise your hand (6 ft) above your head (5 ft) it might seem higher than last light in the line (20 ft), but it won't be.
Light beam from last light (20 ft) will still come to your hand (6 ft) from above.

[AATW]

Correct. Tom said

as per the argument of how the sun can be lower than the mountain in order to look up at it, this was discussed earlier in this thread. If we have a series of lamp posts stretching into the horizon, it is possible and raise your hand to be above a small lamp post on the horizon in the distance. The distant lamp post is now looking up at your hand.
The distant lamp post has the opposite perspective. It sees you at the horizon and it sees your hand slightly above the horizon, and therefore its photons are angled upwards at it.

And I as I said to him in my reply, this is the same level of logic as "when I close my eyes I can't see anything, therefore nothing can see me and I have thus become invisible".
It's the reasoning of a young child.

The angle of a shadow depends on the PHYSICAL relative positions of the light source and the object which the shadow is cast of, not your perspective.

[OrigamiBoy]

I've been reading around on the forum a bit, and I've noticed a common trend.

The senior Flat Earthers cherry pick what they respond to.  The creator of this topic puts in a lot of effort to thoroughly address everything Tom posts and is genuinely wanting to advance the discussion.  Yet Tom posts very short vague replies which don't address the majority of the topic creator's points, and obviously has no interest in furthering the discussion evident by the lack of replies for 8 days now.

Pete Svarrior rather than contribute to the topic, decides to focus in on the barely relevant car part of the analogy while dismissing later examples that directly show that a shape may not actually be what it appears to the eye

Completely agree. This is why I've stopped posting on this website recently. One of my favorite topics is satellites. It's sorta funny because you know you've won the argument when they stop responding.  Look at any of my satellite threads, all forgotten. And there's a pattern, we RE'ers bring up some irrefutable evidence and the Fe'ers just stop responding. The only real debate I've had so for about satellites with Fe'ers is when Tom said it was managed by an old WWII system of navigation called ELoran. I then brought up satellite phones and they stopped responding, I made a separate thread for satellite phones, and junker moved it to angry rated for some reason unrelated to the actual post. I made a thread called satellite phones v2, I and some other RE'ers brought up some more irrefutable evidence and they stopped responding. After a few weeks, I got annoyed and bumped the thread and got banned for 3 days. And what you said about them cherry picking and giving vague answers is soo true. I've seen a post where they fill 2-3 paragraphs with evidence and Tom literally makes a 1 sentence response barely commenting on 1 point made in the thread. And Pete spends most of his time in the lower fora making jokes in one of his threads. When I first went to this website I wanted to debate, but I've learned that you don't debate on this website, you just bring up points and get no complete responses.

[AATW]

When I first went to this website I wanted to debate, but I've learned that you don't debate on this website, you just bring up points and get no complete responses.

Same. I signed up because I am genuinely fascinated by FE Theory, the idea that people in this day and age can still believe this is interesting.
So I signed up to debate the issues and try and understand how their model works.

The issue is, their model doesn't work on any level. I posted a thread about the FE Sun - I read through their Wiki first and my questions were based on what it says there. It did generate some debate but most of the difficult questions I asked remain unanswered - how the sun's orbit works, how it can be a spotlight and yet still illuminate the moon sideways etc. I guess the reason is there are no answers to these things. Which makes me wonder if this whole site is a joke and we are being trolled. Pretty much the first question in their FAQ is "is this site a joke" and they claim not, but the FE model they currently have falls so flat (pun intended) and so spectacularly fails to explain observations that you have to wonder whether they really believe it. There is a lot of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance going on, but still.

[Dr David Thork]

When I first went to this website I wanted to debate, but I've learned that you don't debate on this website, you just bring up points and get no complete responses.

You can debate. But you need to be interesting to get a response. Lets do a thought experiment using this thing I like to call empathy.

Imagine you have been a flat earther for 10 years. You've made 50,000 posts, gone over every topic again and again. And someone signs up with a new account and asks you about gravity, or Coriolis, or satellites. How enthusiastic are you going to be about having that 'debate' for the 400th time? Meanwhile someone is talking about a new film that has come out or some new game or hardware in the lower fora. Which thread are you going to engage in?

This is our site. Our home. You don't walk in, grab the remote and change the channel. Either you come up with something interesting, or you get no response. We aren't here to serve you. Everything you might wish to know about earths shape is in the books we reference, the wiki we provide, the FAQ you probably didn't read and the millions of threads already on the site. The flat earth society is for flat earthers and friends of the society. The clue is in the name.

[AATW]

Imagine you have been a flat earther for 10 years. You've made 50,000 posts, gone over every topic again and again. And someone signs up with a new account and asks you about gravity, or Coriolis, or satellites. How enthusiastic are you going to be about having that 'debate' for the 400th time? Meanwhile someone is talking about a new film that has come out or some new game or hardware in the lower fora. Which thread are you going to engage in?

Fairly reasonable. But my frustration is my thread about the FE sun was based on your Wiki. I had some questions which I didn't feel were answered in the Wiki so they seemed like reasonable questions and while the thread did generate a few pages of debate there were some fairly fundamental questions which just weren't answered. It feels like if you (plural) don't have answers you don't engage. If you're serious about a FE model that works you should be engaging with this stuff. Or, if you have and there are reasonable responses then you could at least point us in the right direction.

My frustration with Tom in particular is he does engage with debates but then walks away from them when he's shown to be wrong. He then says "there are 100 REs for every FE, I can't reply to everyone". But actually the upper fora aren't that busy here, he has time to engage when he wants to, he just stops doing so when someone proves him wrong about something as he did when I proved him wrong on perspective and shadows. I even took the time to do an experiment to demonstrate my point. The two reasonable responses then are either a reply which explains why I am mistaken and my proof is inadequate or to admit he's wrong. He did neither, he just walked away from the thread.

[Dr David Thork]

Usually Tom will answer everything. At some point you won't accept something he says or some evidence he points to. He may give further examples. You won't accept them either. Where is he going to go from there? He's showed you his reasons, you don't agree ... that's the end of the debate. He told you everything he could, he told you why he thinks what he thinks and you didn't accept it. What are you hoping to acheive? Are you expecting to be the person who convinces Tom the world is round? Or are you expecting Tom to convince you that it is flat? There is no winner. It is an exchange of ideas and once those ideas are exchanged, the thread is done and Tom will leave it.

[supaluminus]

I've been reading around on the forum a bit, and I've noticed a common trend.

The senior Flat Earthers cherry pick what they respond to.  The creator of this topic puts in a lot of effort to thoroughly address everything Tom posts and is genuinely wanting to advance the discussion.  Yet Tom posts very short vague replies which don't address the majority of the topic creator's points, and obviously has no interest in furthering the discussion evident by the lack of replies for 8 days now.

Pete Svarrior rather than contribute to the topic, decides to focus in on the barely relevant car part of the analogy while dismissing later examples that directly show that a shape may not actually be what it appears to the eye

Thank you, that is a succinct and excellent summary.

To be fair, I haven't posted on this forum in over a week, but I been busy. I still owe totallackey a video explanation of a very bad chart that attempts to debunk the round earth model.

[Vespa]

Imagine you have been a flat earther for 10 years. You've made 50,000 posts, gone over every topic again and again. And someone signs up with a new account and asks you about gravity, or Coriolis, or satellites. How enthusiastic are you going to be about having that 'debate' for the 400th time? Meanwhile someone is talking about a new film that has come out or some new game or hardware in the lower fora. Which thread are you going to engage in?

That's reasonable, but have you read through any of this thread?  Granted it's quite long, but it is nothing like you've described.  Also like AllAroundTheWorld has mentioned, there are various other threads where discussion has stopped when evidence or arguments come up that the senior Flat Earther's don't have a response to.

Usually Tom will answer everything. At some point you won't accept something he says or some evidence he points to. He may give further examples. You won't accept them either. Where is he going to go from there? He's showed you his reasons, you don't agree ... that's the end of the debate. He told you everything he could, he told you why he thinks what he thinks and you didn't accept it. What are you hoping to acheive? Are you expecting to be the person who convinces Tom the world is round? Or are you expecting Tom to convince you that it is flat? There is no winner. It is an exchange of ideas and once those ideas are exchanged, the thread is done and Tom will leave it.

This is just not true in any of the discussion or debate threads I've read, in fact it usually the exact opposite.  Just read through this thread for an example.  Where are Tom and/or Pete's responses?  They both started to discuss and then abandoned ship

[AATW]

Usually Tom will answer everything. At some point you won't accept something he says or some evidence he points to. He may give further examples. You won't accept them either. Where is he going to go from there? He's showed you his reasons, you don't agree ... that's the end of the debate. He told you everything he could, he told you why he thinks what he thinks and you didn't accept it. What are you hoping to acheive? Are you expecting to be the person who convinces Tom the world is round? Or are you expecting Tom to convince you that it is flat? There is no winner. It is an exchange of ideas and once those ideas are exchanged, the thread is done and Tom will leave it.

That really isn't my experience of threads where I've seen Tom debating stuff. Look at this thread for example, the one I mentioned above
https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=6875.160
His explanation for the angle of shadows is ludicrous. I did an experiment which proved how silly it was and have provided photographic proof. Later down the page I provided a diagram showing he is wrong. How is that the end of the debate? He has made a claim about why the shadows are angled as they are. He provides no evidence or proof, he just states it. I take the time to do an experiment which proves him wrong and he ignores it. He hasn't showed his reasons, he just stated his position and when I proved him wrong he walked away from the thread. I've seen him do it to other people too.
I guess I don't expect Tom admit he is wrong. He has staked too much on this, the cognitive dissonance just won't let him. But there are other people looking here who might see the things I and others post and it might sway them. One could argue why does it matter what shape the world is. I just think the truth is important and worth standing up for, especially in the "post truth" world we find ourselves in where it increasingly doesn't seem to matter to people what is true. It does matter. Sensible debate has to start with a shared model of reality.
If you can't answer basic questions like "how can the sun shine sideways to illuminate the moon so we can see it but not shine diagonally so we can see it at night" then you have to question how well your model works. Which doesn't mean there is no possible flat earth model which could work, but the one presented in your Wiki doesn't.

[ShowmetheProof]

I have to say, that is a good summary of what happens.  I have seen diagrams created multiple times that show proof against TFE, but they are immediately dismissed by FE'ers.

[OrigamiBoy]

Usually Tom will answer everything. At some point you won't accept something he says or some evidence he points to. He may give further examples. You won't accept them either. Where is he going to go from there? He's showed you his reasons, you don't agree ... that's the end of the debate. He told you everything he could, he told you why he thinks what he thinks and you didn't accept it. What are you hoping to acheive? Are you expecting to be the person who convinces Tom the world is round? Or are you expecting Tom to convince you that it is flat? There is no winner. It is an exchange of ideas and once those ideas are exchanged, the thread is done and Tom will leave it.

That would be fine if it were true. Tom hardly ever gives a straight answer with evidence to back it up. Look at my GPS thread, for example, I asked basically asked what allowed me to get a signal in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico and he said eLORAN. I then brought up satellite phones and have still not gotten a response.

[JohnAdams1145]

One should note that the eLORAN explanation is garbage. The signals transmitted by the GPS and GLONASS satellites are well-documented. People (read: not the government) design their own receivers for them that point at the sky to locate the satellites and calculate travel time to each. You can make one yourself if you're good at electrical engineering. LORAN would require a completely different receiver under completely different assumptions.

[lookatmooninUKthenAUS]

It seems that most of the obstacles to the 'truth' here relate to how one can ascertain the reliability of objective data. In the scientific sphere (pardon the pun..he he) data must be:

1. Recorded accurately (with well calibrated detection methods) - to satisfy this we will use our eyes. No systematic error can creep in since no calibration is required. Perception can be an issue but not in the case we shall outline below.
2. Recorded without prejudice (a problem even in the scientific realm) - this is normally surmounted by doing a 'double blind' study where the observers and recorders are unaware of the 'desired' outcome. To satisfy this we could allow only one observer to take part, namely the flat earther.  Otherwise we could contact a random sample of people and ask them to report observations to another randomly sampled group of volunteers with adequate mathematical knowledge to draw a graph.
3. Repeat the process: Once a conclusion is made regarding flat/round/otherwise we can repeat the experiment using other test criteria, this is the 'peer reviewing' process. Normally this is done via published articles but the idea of getting other separate parties to review your experiment and/or repeat it is not exclusive to science. Its a common sense approach and removes the 'conspiracy theory' element. All you need are some people willing to make simple observations and send them to you.

Method 1
- Look at the moon (or get others to do so and record the position of key features.
- Fly to different, distant part of the Earth.
- Look at the moon again (or record same features).
- If the moon looks the same from all locations, then the Earth is flat. If it looks different, it is not. Indeed, if any features are upside down, it is because the Earth must be spherical.

The beauty of this method is - you can do it yourself. However, the observations recorded by your observers should be the same no matter how many people take part. Reality is reality after all.

Even better would be to sign up for space-X commercial space flights which should commence within our lifetime. I would imagine the flat Earth society would be all over that one.

Other methods I have thought of involve recording the centripetal force caused by the earth's rotation at different positions. If flat there should be no variation in the vertical component, indeed there should be no vertical component.

I await the responses to my suggestion with interest. If we assume that a person can trust their own eyes to record objective reality on a macroscopic scale then we have somewhere to start. Otherwise we are adrift in a reductionist world of rumour and eternal ignorance where one persons absolute truth is another persons conspiracy theory.